


May There Be Many A Summer Morning

by Dogstar, nagia



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Groundhog Day, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-09 04:05:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11096535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogstar/pseuds/Dogstar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: With the world on the brink of war again, a war she has no heart for, Diana tries to return to Themyscira -- and finds herself standing on the wreckage of a German airplane, looking down into the water at Steve Trevor.  She's not sure if this is a dream or a second chance, but she's determined that the Great War will end differently this time.





	1. 1937 - 1918 (the first time)

Hope the voyage is a long one.  
May there be many a summer morning when,  
with what pleasure, what joy,  
you come into harbors seen for the first time;  
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations  
to buy fine things,  
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,  
sensual perfume of every kind—  
as many sensual perfumes as you can;  
and may you visit many Egyptian cities  
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

\-- Cavafy, "Ithaka"

* * *

1920

Diana, Princess of Themyscira was invited to the Olympics, held in Antwerp. It was only natural -- the modern Olympics still paid tribute to Zeus and the other gods, at least a little, and the diplomat who sent the invitation probably only meant for her to be one more bit of glittering society in the crowd. 

But she went, and cheered as much as anyone could, and thought that Steve Trevor would have enjoyed the athleticism and sense of unity in the crowd. The war was over for real- for good. Antwerp showed the scars of the war, but they were healing over. 

Sammy came with her, acting as her driver and guide (she was fairly sure she didn’t need one, but if feeling useful brought him along, she was content with that), and one day instead of watching the rowers, they drove out to where Veld had been and laid flowers at the marker that was all that remained of the town. 

“I would have thought they’d rebuild here,” She said to Sammy. “It was a nice town.” 

Sammy shrugged. “Maybe not enough people came back from the war, or they didn’t want to live with the memories of the ones who died here. Some people believe in ghosts.”

Diana didn’t think she believed in ghosts, but for a second, she could almost smell the sharp, chemical smell of the gas, see the bodies on the ground that had been left after Maru’s demonstration. Another heartbeat, though, and instead she and Sammy stood on a dusty patch of ground off the macadam road where it turned into the village, listening to the distant sound of a steam-powered earth mover as it pushed rubble into a pile further into the village. 

“No one should forget their dead,” was all she said. 

* * *

1932

Diana moved on with the new life she’d built. She returned to the Olympics again, as she has done before, travelling all the way to the west coast of America by train from New York. Sammy didn't accompany her; she’d long passed the point that either of them could really pretend she needed his assistance as a guide. 

She had thought she'd seen the worst mankind had to offer itself during the war. But this peace -- this peace, too, was deadly.

No one had been poor in Themyscira. Now and here, it seemed almost everyone was. There were fields to the side of the train containing bony cattle and dust instead of golden grass and hay. There were fields with machinery -- tractors -- sitting idle in the dirt, but no crops and no people tending them. At the stations, people were ragged and as desperate as any refugee had been during the war, but the sounds in the background weren’t shelling but radio advertisements for soup kitchens and laundry soap. 

She wore tweed and linen, tailored especially for her frame, and drank unwatered wine and coffee and tea, and the dining car served what, in man's world, were fine dinners every night. She would have to have been blind not to see the contrast.

The Olympics, though -- 

Los Angeles had its own kind of beauty. No two people said the city's name quite the same way, a thing she found strangely charming. The games were smaller than they had been in Amsterdam or Paris or Antwerp, but the athletes were as dedicated and there were more women than ever. She dined with them several times, at a fancy hotel where they were all staying like school girls at a boarding house, and they welcomed her as one of their own. 

She wished Steve could have been there to see it with her.

* * *

1936

She almost didn't go to the Olympics in Berlin. She spent more time in Paris, these days, than London, but Etta Candy's letters -- and their conversation during the times one of them was in the other's city -- were full of bright, airy phrases and dark portents.

The whole idea of what Germany seemed to be doing to itself, of what these so-called National Socialists wanted in their world, unsettled her. She wondered what Antiope and her mother would think of it. Deciding what the world deserved --

But a letter signed Luise-Charlotte Diem arrived at her hotel suite in Paris, and with it, an invitation. A train ticket, even. She decided to attend at the last minute, almost, inviting Sam and Charlie to go as her guests, although she knew Charlie wouldn’t leave his pub.

She missed Paris and Vienna, while she was in Berlin. The city was clean -- so clean! -- and unnaturally quiet except for smiling citizen guides, all blond-haired and blue eyed and curiously deaf to questions they didn’t want to hear. There was so little real art left -- oh, the city had its beauty, but the Fuehrer had taken away the art and replaced it with lies. Messages that used what had been the art of her mother's people, the purity of form, to speak to people. Eagles and muscular heros and smiling farmer women had replaced the works that made people think and question in the museums, and there were strangely few bookshops or any of the raucous student cafes discussing politics that she was used to from Paris. 

The games themselves were a mockery from the opening ceremony on. Her ticket included a box seat and Sam came along as escort. What passed for society was hardfaced, supercilious men and women who looked down on both Sam and herself. She’d never cared about where her friends came from, and as soon as she could manage it, she and Sam removed themselves to the common stands, where things were at least a little better. 

They found a pair of seats in the stands next to a pair of local women -- Berliners, they described themselves, about Etta Candy’s age, fashionably dressed, the older with laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. As they watched the athletes of each country parade around the stadium -- something new for this Olympics -- Diana listened. The women seemed friendly, had greeted her and Sam in English and Diana had responded in the same language, but her German was perfect too. 

“It’s all very nice, but I’ll be glad when the foreigners go home.” The older woman’s face no longer looked marked by laughter but by cruelty and pettiness. The younger agreed with her. Diana and Sam locked eyes, though neither said anything, and in a few more moments, found a reason to move on.

There was more in the streets, quiet snubs and uncomfortable pauses.

The worst snub of all was by Germany's new Fuehrer toward an athlete who had won four gold medals. He greeted only the German medalists in that event, and could not be bothered to congratulate the rest, from what Diana witnessed.

The distaste on the faces of the women she had sat with spoke volumes. Surely, Adolf Hitler, of the National Socialists, could only be less kindly disposed toward the medalist in question.

There was going to be a war -- good people would not let this regime stand, and she had to believe there were still good people in man's world -- and Diana hadn’t the heart try try and save people such as these.

* * *

1937

She’d seen the barrier protecting Themyscira from the inside for her entire life; for all that, she’d only passed through it the once, late of an evening in a boat with a near-total stranger, too much on her mind to look back. From the outside, it looked entirely different, because there was literally nothing to look at. 

“I know this is the right place,” Diana said. Sam, sitting behind her at the wheel of their little yacht, made a thoughtful noise. “The barrier that protects the island conceals it from the world of men, but I can feel it now that I am close.” 

“It would be ungallant of me to doubt a lady, but this fog came up so suddenly,” Sam craned his neck and adjusted the throttle a bit, the motor of the boat puttering quietly. “It’s uncanny!” 

“It’s magic, after all,” Diana replied. 

The yacht’s cockpit was to the top and center; it was a matter of a few steps to exit it onto a little deck exposed to sun and wind. Even as they’d sailed out of Mytilene on a sunny spring day, the weather for the past hour had gotten increasingly overcast. Fog hung over the water, and the few times she thought she’d spotted the barrier rocks that surrounded them, it’d been mere phantoms. Still, they were close. She could feel it. It was like a weight pressing her up against the impossible that was bearing her down. 

_Almost home. Soon you can rest for a while before taking on the world again, Diana_. See her mother again. Return the hilt of the Godkiller to the Tower for safekeeping, the shield and the lasso likewise, though they at least had survived the War to End All Wars undamaged. 

“We’ll be there soon. Steer us a little bit into the wind, Sam.” 

He did, swinging the yacht's wheel. The rudder turned, and she trimmed the sails, and the boat she'd bought fought the wind and the sea for her.

There would be no taking it past the barrier, to the island. Her mother might not condemn a new man in her company, but she did not think it coincidence that Steve's plane had been allowed past the barrier only because it was coming apart. And she could not, would not, see Sameer dashed upon the rocks in reach of Paradise.

Diana turned to face Sam. He was watching the fog roil around the sea and squinting; his eyes were not Charlie's, that saw so far, so much, and yet could also see so little. Today, they were more like the Chief's, grave and serious and far, far wiser beyond what most expected of him.

She took his hands in both of hers, and he looked up at her, clearly troubled. Her heart squeezed a little, to worry one of the few true friends she had in the world -- in all the world, Themyscira and the world of mankind both -- but it could not matter. 

When she knew she had his full attention, she said, “Sameer, you have to promise me that you will go someplace safe. I can’t tell you where that will be, only that it won’t be Europe.” 

He stared up at her, then down at their hands. "Are you going to be safe?" She could hear it, the recrimination he did not say: the Diana I know does not run. But he was a practical man.

“You know I will be. This war -- Ares is gone, this war is the making of men alone, and men alone will have to fight it for themselves. There’s nothing more I or any one person alone can do to stop it. The barrier will protect Themyscira as it’s always done.” 

Sam looked profoundly sad. It cast his eyes down, into a look that had always reminded her of a chastised puppy, and roughened his voice when he said, "Then you know I will miss you, Diana. It has been -- I have been happy. And I'll be careful. Perhaps I'll go make sure Charlie stays well out of it."

She tried to imagine Charlie, owner of a pub in Glasgow, joining up whatever new war effort there would be. Her heart squeezed again.

"If it makes you happy," she said, and switched back to French. It had been their hello, nineteen years ago; it seemed fitting it be their goodbye, today. "If it makes you happy, and if it keeps you both safe, I would never judge you for what you chose next. Farewell, Sam."

She squeezed his hands, and he squeezed back. But he let go when she did, and she turned away from him, climbing up onto the prow of the ship. She would not need a very great run-up for this leap.

The water was colder than she had expected. The waters around Themyscira had always seemed so warm and welcoming, but this was a sea that wanted no part of her. The armor she wore, the vambraces, they seemed to weigh her down. Worst of all was the lasso, glowing gold and seeming to writhe and seethe in its loop.

The barrier hated her. The sea hated her. Her heart felt so heavy with grief, with regret, and the weight of it all was pushing her down.

And the fog lifted, and through the mist, she saw Calliope's Cliff, and the beach -- 

And herself, standing atop the burning wreckage of a plane.

It was like her heart turned to a stone in her chest. Pulling her down. She would surely drown, if she kept going, and it seemed so practical, so right, to turn back. She swam away a few paces, feeling lighter, more real, and the fog began to roll back in.

No. She was Diana, Princess of Themyscira and she would not give up. She would not be beaten by the barrier that had protected her all her life. Her mother had said she was not an Amazon, but she had been wrong; Diana was perhaps the only Amazon purely of the Island in all their people, and, too, she was a god.

She took a deep breath, and swam back for the fog, and this time she ignored the hazy, shimmering sight of her younger self. She swam, and swam, and if the waves and the tide and the weight in her chest dragged her down, she kept moving forward, toward Paradise.

* * *

1918

Diana did not feel herself reach shore, but she was dry, somehow, and she had closed her eyes against the glare of the sun, which seemed so much brighter in Themyscira than it had in the world of men. She was dry, and the air was moving about her, and ahead of her the ocean was crashing against the shore, and her feet were perfectly balanced on something.

She felt light. Almost impossibly so.

And she smelled smoke, and hot metal, and something was creaking.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing on the wreckage of Steve's plane, and her face was tilted downward. She had been looking down toward him.

She didn't even think about it. She dove. Now, as she had then, she pulled him from the plane's cockpit. If this was a dream, it didn't matter. She would not let even a dream of Steve die.

But he felt real under her arm, and the waves were warm and salty and just as real, and she could feel every grain of sand against her skin as she dragged him onto the beach. She collapsed down on the sand next to him, looking over him.

And gods help her, but her heart leapt when he began to cough and sputter. She pressed down on his chest, and he spewed out seawater.

"You're alive," she said, when he opened his eyes. She had almost forgotten how blue they were.

His reply was as dryly confused, as infused with bewildered humor, as it had been when they had truly met the first time. "Are you sure?"

She couldn't help it. She laughed. "I am very sure," she said, and she added, a little sadder, "I know what the dead look like."

The dream of Steve evidently decided there was no reply to that. "Where am I?"

"The Isle of Themyscira," she told him. At his confused look, she said, "It is not far from Mytilene, great port of Lesbos."

It was a thing she had not known, then -- a thing she doubted any of the Amazons would ever have seen fit to tell her, had she not discovered it for herself. But she knew it now, and she saw no reason not to share it. It was a fact that might have amused the real Steve. 

There had been a poet, on Lesbos, of whose works Antiope had been enamored.

Steve's brow furrowed, but there was no time for a further reply. He stared past her, at the water, and cold dread began to shiver through her. She turned, too, and stared at the rowboats that were making their ways through the barrier.

Not again, she thought.

She didn't bother to ask who they were, simply went charging forward, to the edge of the beach where the sea licked at the sand, and by the time she reached it, she could hear the thundering hooves of the Amazon's horses.

She could not, would not, endure this again. Not even in a dream.

Philippus was beautiful, for all of a moment, as she swung her way down, arrow nocked. But the bullet was fast, her death was speeding toward her, and it was instinct to Diana to knock it aside with her vambraces.

By the time the Germans landed, she was well into the fray. Fighting as fiercely as she had Ares. She was not confused, this time. Not desperate. Bullet after bullet, blow after blow, and though she was not armed, she needed none.

She had not forgotten how loud gunshots were.

She saved as many of her sisters, of her people, as she could.

When the moment came -- as this moment had come so often in other dreams over the years -- she did not let Antiope shield her. She charged forward, instead, blocking with her vambraces, and Steve brought his rifle down on the German's head like a club. He did not stop swinging until the German had stopped breathing.

It was over, with that. Diana caught her breath, and her heart began to slow. 

The Amazons all but ignored him, at least for a while. They had to regroup, to count the living and number the dead and direct the wounded back to the city. There were horses to round up -- and a few to give a merciful death to -- and fallen weapons to collect.

It was a strangely trivial detail, and yet her mind pursues it to its end.

Slowly, slowly, the eyes of her people turned to Steve Trevor, who had raised his hands up in the air, and their gaze was a hard one.

"He brought this to us," Menalippe said, at Antiope's side, and her voice was cold. "This death. This destruction. These other men."

"I'm not with them," Steve promised. "I'm not. I'm one of the --"

Antiope's eyes were as unfeeling as a hunting falcon's as she looked at him. "You wear their colors," she said.

 

She had not yet sheathed her sword.

Diana might have been fast enough, if she'd had any sense it was coming. If she'd ever had this nightmare before, she might have been able to step in front of Steve and turn the blow aside.

But all of Antiope moved at once, the weapon that was her body striking out with no warning. The sword went in through Steve's unarmored stomach, its gray edge flashing in the sun, and Steve looked as surprised as she felt. He swayed on his feet, one hand rising to touch at the edge of the wound, and then his expression turned resigned.

As if he should have expected such betrayal. She could read in his expression that very thought.

Diana caught him, as he wobbled and fell, and the tears were hot on her face.

"One of the good guys," she said to him, and around her, her people rippled away. "I know you are."

He was reaching into his jacket. Reaching for the book, she guessed, or his father's watch. Trying to pass on his mission, maybe, or maybe her dreaming mind was mixing his real death with this one.

It was a bitter comfort, but in this dream, she held him as he died on the beach of Paradise. She closed her eyes when the light in his turned glassy and vacant, and it seemed as if the thin grey light overtook the whole world behind her closed eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### History Notes From Dogstar & Nagia
>
>> the modern Olympics still paid tribute to Zeus and the other gods
> 
> This is not really true; Apollo was patron of the Olympics, but we’re ignoring it for the sake of keeping cosmology _sort of_ consistent)
>
>> but no crops and no people tending them.
> 
> Part of what made the Great Depression so far-reaching and, in some cases, fatal was that there was a famine going on at the time.
>
>> radio advertisements for soup kitchens and laundry soap. 
> 
> We're not super sure that they were advertising soup kitchens on the radio, but the laundry soap advertisements were the building blocks of the soap opera. That's why they're called that, in fact!
>
>> No two people said the city's name quite the same way, a thing she found strangely charming.
> 
> Actually true! It wasn't until the age of the radio -- and possibly _especially_ Dragnet -- that Los Angeles took on a standardized pronunciation. People were doing anything from making the final 'e' long to pronouncing it with a hard 'g' to pronouncing it exactly it should have been in Spanish.
>
>> at a fancy hotel where they were all staying like school girls at a boarding house
> 
> Also true! While the Los Angeles Olympics were the first use of an Olympic Village, it was reserved exclusively for the men. The female athletes stayed in a hotel.
>
>> Luise-Charlotte Diem
> 
> The full name of Lieselot Diem, wife of Carl Diem, the great mind behind the 1936 Olympics.
>
>> The worst snub of all was by Germany's new Fuehrer toward an athlete who had won four gold medals. He greeted only the German medalists in that event, and could not be bothered to congratulate the rest, from what Diana witnessed.
> 
> There are some conflicting accounts on this, in fact. Jesse Owens later went on to say that Hitler didn't snub him, but the White House did. There may have been a meeting in private. It has been confirmed that Hitler only congratulated the German winners. But this is the narrative that endures, and the narrative that Diana would be most likely to buy into.
>
>> There had been a poet, on Lesbos, of whose works Antiope had been enamored.
> 
> Let's be real: Socrates would of course have been respected, but Sappho would have been _beloved_. Also you will never persuade either of us that Antiope wasn't queer and banging her right hand warrior. 


	2. 1918 (the second time)

1918

The scent of greasy smoke and hot metal. The sound of waves crashing onto the shore. The feel of something beneath her, bobbing up and down, while water tickled at her boots and worked its way within.

Diana opened her eyes, and saw Steve Trevor, sinking into the depths, where the light would not touch him. The ocean was as blue as she knew his eyes to be, lit as it was by the sun that was different in Themyscira.

She almost didn't dive. She was caught in this nightmare again, and she didn't want it. She wanted to wake up. She tried, desperately, to open her eyes, but as far as her sleeping mind was concerned, they were already open.

And leaving him to die — it was a thing she could not do. Not even in a nightmare.

She dove. When she hauled him out of the water and he woke, this time, she only smiled.

"I am Diana," she told him, and watched his eyes widen. She could not help the smile.

He coughed and spluttered and said, "I'm Steve. Uh, where am I?"

"The Island of Themyscira," she answered. She almost asked: don't you remember? But if the dream had started over again, then she supposed only she would.

"Uh-huh." He said in the exact tone of skepticism that she remembered with both frustration and fondness. He continued in a voice slurred with pain and exhaustion, "And where is that, exactly?"

"It is near Mytilene." At his blank look, she added, "The great port of Lesbos. Have you never heard of it?"

"That is a great port I can definitely say I've never heard the name of." But he was looking off behind her, now, and she could hear the ocean slapping at wooden rowboats.

The cold dread came back

She was faster, in this battle. Philippus survived, because she could not bear to see her sister cut down, the tension leaving her body even as the rope she'd swung from stayed taut.

Steve was slower, more confused. Had it taken him so long to wrest a gun from one of the Germans in the real battle? She couldn't tell, but she didn't believe it to be so. Still, once he had his rifle, he was good help for taking out the Germans quickly.

This time, she brought her vambraces up, but Antiope leapt in front of her despite it, and she collapsed to the bloodied sand beside her aunt, keening as hard, maybe harder, than she had the day this had truly happened.

"God-killer," Antiope whispered, her blood staining Diana's fingers and mingling with the wave-froth that had crept up onto the beach. "God-killer, Diana, the time has come."

But this time Diana understood, and she did not waste her time with questions. "I love you," she said, instead, because it was the thing she needed Antiope to hear. Love was too important to be silenced by death or confusion. 

"I love you, Antiope. I will not disappoint you."

Antiope's rare smiles had always had a hard edge to them. This time, though, she barely managed to crook her lips, and there was a softness in her features, as she ended.

The Amazons mourned.

Steve Trevor was taken captive.

* * *

She followed her people back to the city. Menalippe and Niobe bore Antiope's body back on a litter. Another strange detail to dream, and yet a fitting one. It would be Menalippe, Antiope's lover, and Hippolyta, her sister, who would consign Antiope's body to the pyre.

But that was tomorrow. Today, she went back to the city and was tended by Eusklapia. Her wounds were bandaged, and it hurt enough, felt real enough, that she almost wondered if she did not dream.

"You seem preoccupied," Eusklapia said. "It is the arrival of men? Or is your heart so sore for Antiope that you cannot be here with me?" As Diana jerked her head up in surprise, the healer only held up a hand and gave her a gentle, comforting smile. "I do not blame you for it, for either reason. I simply wanted to know. I am here to help you, Diana."

"I thought men couldn't find the island," Diana said. "I thought they were — I don't know what I thought."

"The survivor says you saved his life." 

Eusklapia said it softly. There was no disapproval in her voice or her gaze, only the serious concern of someone whose charge was hurting.

"He was drowning. And now I feel as if I'm drowning, Eusklapia. In what this might mean for us, and in our loss. I did not mean to hurt her at practice. I didn't know how it happened. And I — now we've lost her."

Eusklapia only watched her with kind, solemn eyes, and then leaned forward to kiss her brow.

"Antiope was well-beloved of us all for a reason. You are too young to remember, Diana, but we Amazons have suffered losses before. It will hurt for a time — a long time — and you will always miss her. We will all always miss her. But it will become bearable."

She knew that. She had come to terms with it in the past nineteen years. She couldn't understand why Eusklapia would be saying this to her. Or why Eusklapia had left out the worst part of grief: the moments when it weighed heavily but didn't hurt, and how that meant that the one you were mourning was really and truly gone.

"Thank you," she replied.

* * *

After she left the infirmary, she went to see her mother. She discovered through asking that Hippolyta had retreated to her own rooms, leaving Menalippe and two of Antiope's soldiers to prepare her for the funeral.

Diana had not done this, on that day. She'd gone elsewhere, to visit Steve, she was fairly sure. But it seemed important.

She found her mother in her chambers, reclining on a couch and staring into a fire. Her mother was not weeping.

Diana went to her, and they held each other close. She wept the tears her mother would not, and her mother squeezed her, and it was as comforting as it had been since she was a child. As much as everything hurt, as real as this could not possibly be, it was exactly what she needed. What she'd needed for years.

"I am dreaming, Mother," she said, softly. "And it's so awful, but I'm so glad I'm seeing you again."

Hippolyta did not seem to understand, for she answered her with, "If only it were a dream. And never be ashamed to be grateful for those who yet live. We honor and mourn our dead, but we must never forget to number the living."

Diana considered her reply. At last, though, she gave it. "No, Mother. This isn't even the worst way this dream has gone. I've already dreamed it. After Antiope — I am the god-killer, the weapon Themyscira was made to protect. I will leave the Island."

She could not bare her grief for Steve — in nineteen years, it had not faded yet — while her mother mourned Antiope. And yet she could not lie, either. Even in a dream, lying to her mother felt wrong.

Her mother stiffened in her grip. She turned to look at her, and Diana could see the dawning horror in her eyes.

"You can't know that," Hippolyta said.

But she did. And she knew her mother must see it in her eyes, the grief that weighed on her, the knowledge.

Hippolyta leaned forward, gripping her shoulders, and said, "Tell me."

Diana did.

* * *

No part of it was a story her mother relished to hear. But Diana told it nonetheless: stealing the armor that Hephaestus had left for her, their final conversation on the shore. How she had sailed away with Steve Trevor, and how strange and foreign London had been to her at first. The victory at the front, and how swiftly it turned to defeat.

She did not tell her mother about the night she and Steve had spent in Veld. That detail — no, she could not speak of it to her mother. Either her mother had never lain with a man, and thus would not understand, or there was something more complicated to the story of her own conception, and Diana did not wish to learn it.

She touched more briefly on the years after the Armistice, but went into detail about her encounter with the barrier, and opening her eyes on the very first moment she'd ever seen Steve. About Antiope surviving, and killing him, and how it had happened all over again.

At the end of it, her mother was giving her a look that was both hollow-eyed and shrewd. "So this was the second time you have awakened on the wreck?" But she didn't wait for Diana's answer before she said, "There is great magic in that barrier. And you — you know what you are. If you were forbidden entry to Themyscira, it was not by my doing, but, I think, by your own."

"I don't understand."

Hippolyta nodded. "You say you felt the lasso pull you under. You say your grief weighed too heavy on you — I think that is why the barrier denied you entry. And I think that is why the barrier brought you back to that moment. If you wish to return, you must — I think the reason for your grief must not come to pass."

Diana bowed her head.

She would have to find a way to save Steve Trevor. Or she would have to find a way for his death not to hurt her so badly.

She wasn't sure which sounded more impossible.

* * *

She did not weep herself to sleep that night, as she had the first time she had lived through these terrible days. The next morning, she went to see Steve. She caught him bathing again.

This time, though, she turned, in deference to the sensibilities of man's world.

"I will let you dress, I think," she said, not looking over her shoulder even though she wanted to.

"Uh, thank you," Steve said from behind her, as fabric whispered and his feet moved over the stone. "I didn't hear you come in. Isn't there a door or something?"

"No door," she replied. "There are a pair of guards who are still grieving Antiope. I don't suggest trying to go past them. Can I turn around, yet? I want to see who I am talking to."

A momentary pause, more whispering fabric, and Steve said, "I'm dressed. So, why am I in a dungeon?"

Diana turned around. There he was, in the uniform he'd stolen from the Germans, with his watch and his notebook, and she knew he had maps tucked away somewhere, but he had not drawn them out, yet. The sight of him filled her heart, and broke it, too.

"You say that like you think we will hurt you," she said. "It was you who brought trouble to our island."

"It's a pretty big war. Every island is in trouble."

"We have not been touched by this war, until now. We know nothing of it. We do know that you — a man — have arrived on Themyscira, a thing we did not think would ever happen, and in your wake followed bloodshed. Why wouldn't you be in prison?"

There was a flash of disbelief and humor in Steve's eyes. He could not imagine a place in the world that had not been touched by the Great War, as the world would take to calling it.

"You put it like that, it almost makes sense."

"I think it makes perfect sense."

They lapsed into silence for a moment, Steve studying her, and Diana watching him in turn, memorizing all over again a face she was so, so glad she had not yet forgotten. She loved him still, she realized. So much that it was an ache inside her, hollowing out her chest and her lungs and her stomach.

"Are there really not any men on this island?"

Diana smiled, and sat down. "None."

"So where did your father go?" Steve was watching her intently.

"I never had one," she replied. "My mother has always told me that she sculpted me from clay and begged Zeus to bring me to life, and he granted her prayer."

Steve's expression warred between polite skepticism and outright disbelief. At length, he arched his eyebrows and said, "That's… neat. Where I come from, babies are made very differently."

It was a conversation they'd had on the ship, she realized. And, despite herself, it made her laugh a little. "They aren't made that way here, either." At his look, she added, "We do breed our horses. I have… come to believe that the story of my birth is… very different from the truth. A truth my mother does not want to tell."

That earned a nod. She understood, really. It fit into what he understood of the world.

"You had a father?" At his nod — and reflexive glance toward his watch — she smiled again. "What is it like?"

That caught him off guard. "To have a father? You want to know what having a father is like?"

"Yes! And I want to know about your mother. I want to know about both of them."

Steve was silent for a long time, working his watch between his fingers, winding and unwinding it. "It was just… my childhood. Mom was always there, you know? And Dad was out in the fields. He was… I don't know, he was a good dad. He gave me this watch the day I joined the Army."

She leaned forward to inspect the watch. And then she asked, "What's a good dad?"

* * *

The council session, where they compelled Steve Trevor to tell the truth, went almost entirely as she remembered it. Her mother was at least less hostile, though Diana could see that none of the Amazons had forgiven him for being the reason the Germans had come to Paradise. He had not killed Antiope himself, but if he had not arrived, she would not have died.

Diana knew, but did not say, what would have happened if she had been faster, better — if she had charged before Antiope could.

Her mother heard him out. And while the others stared, furious, her mother's eyes rested on her.

"I believe him," her mother said. "To lose Antiope — I believe this means it is time. Ares has returned. And Diana must leave us."

Her mother's decision sent a ripple through the ground.

It was Menalippe who said, "If they are at war, let them stay at war. It had not touched us until today. This is no concern of the Amazons."

"If it is Ares," Diana said, and the words came out so gravely. 'If,' she said, when she knew it to be Ares. But she could not say so now — not here. "Then it is our duty as Amazons to stop him. Is this not why Themyscira was created? To safeguard the god-killer?"

Hippolyta held out a hand. "I will take council with the senators. We will decide what aid Themyscira may offer — but it will offer aid. I have seen other signs, other portents, that this is the work of Ares."

* * *

In the end, it passed that her mother offered Steve the full aid of Themyscira. Not the full army of the Amazons, but an honor guard, at least. Menalippe, who had been a second aunt to her all her life, accepted this news with a cold, hard stare.

"Volunteers only," Hippolyta announced in court. "I will not name any regiment, nor force any of us to leave our island unwilling. But the god-killer must be delivered to the world of men."

Niobe stepped forward. Philippus. Eusklapia. Irene joined them, looking at the others and then at Diana. 

“Defeating Ares is our sacred duty.” She said. “We are honored to assist you, Princess.”

* * *

This time, there was no stealthy run to the tower or the dock. They boarded a slightly larger ship in daylight, and the mood of the Amazons watching her depart this time seemed more determined than sad. Steve waited, a little impatiently, on the ship.

“Come back safe to us,” Hippolyta said, as she embraced Diana on the dock. This time, she did not tell Diana about her sorrow. Diana hugged her mother, then stepped back. 

“I will.” She promised. It was harder than she had expected it to be, much harder than it had been the first time to turn away and walk the few steps over the wooden pier to the side of the boat. Then, she had been nervous but resolute, filled with the bone-deep knowledge that her course was the right one. 

She still had that, of course, but the number of things that could have gone wrong and hadn’t filled her head now in a way they hadn’t then. Still. Diana straightened her shoulders and stepped off the dock, nodding at Phillipus, who cast away the mooring rope. The waves began carrying the ship away. 

She had that, but she also had already done the most difficult thing anyone had ever thought to do. She had killed a god. She could do it again.

* * *

The voyage was different, setting out with six rather than two. The ship her mother had given her didn't have staterooms or the other modern comforts of the ships she'd sailed in after the Great War, but it was light, and the winds drove it hard. Diana spent three nights sleeping among the other Amazons, and where Steve slept, she did not know. Never in three nights did she discover it.

On the fourth, Steve found the tugboat. She knew only because Niobe woke her, shaking her shoulder.

"We are betrayed," Niobe hissed, and her whole expression promised vengeance for it.

Diana drew her sword and strode to the deck to find Steve negotiating with the captain of the tugboat that had pulled them to London the first time she'd left Themyscira, nineteen years ago. She held out a hand, signalling to Niobe to wait, and watched Steve talk.

He was very, very good at talking people into doing as he needed. Stranded on a sailing ship with no money, no weapons, and in rumpled clothing, he managed to at least hold the attention of the tugboat's captain. The man didn't look convinced yet.

'Sweet talking' had been Sameer's job, she seemed to recall. But — what was it Steve had called himself? Liar, murderer, thief? Steve was capable of all of it, she knew, but there was much more to him as well. 

“What is he doing?” Phillipus joined them at the rail, glaring at the tugboat captain for good measure. “What can this ship do that ours cannot?” 

“It can push us into the wind,” Diana said. “We’ll arrive faster if he can secure their help.” 

“The sooner we kill Ares, the sooner we can go home.” Niobe looked back, out over the wake of their ship. “In the meantime, Princess — do you have a plan?” 

Diana smiled thinly. 

“As a matter of fact, I do. But this isn’t the time or place to discuss it.” She glanced over at Steve. He would be upset when she killed Ares in his guise as Lord Patrick, but she was confident she could explain to him, could make him understand. He understood the necessity of stopping the war at any cost. 

“I will tell you what I know about Ares — all of you — but Ares is Amazon business. We should let Steve handle man’s world, and we should make our own plans.” 

Steve would understand when she explained to him afterwards. He _would._


End file.
